“To please me?”
“They believe you are the only one who might complete the task God has given them. They would gladly die to protect you.” She shook her head, as if at their folly. “Taking the Angel’s voice from my head was a minor behest for them. I tried to argue Raphael out of it, for the Angels could have aided us on our journey. On the task they gave us. But in its eagerness to please you, it wouldn’t listen.” She made no attempt to hide her bewilderment—and antipathy—as she spat out these last words. “When I regained consciousness, they said they took you to a healing place, where they knit your arm—and prayed for you.”
“But I killed Raphael!”
“It is no matter to the Angels that you killed Raphael,” Ali said. “They don’t believe God has given them free will. They are here to do his bidding, as best they can. What happens to them is neither good nor bad. It’s just what happens—because it must.”
“No.” I had killed an Angel, and had expected to be punished. Wanted to be punished. “They are God’s messengers.”
“And animals are God’s creatures,” Ali said. “Yet they, too, are as soulless as Angels, and so without free will. If you kill a goose, is that murder?”
Despite my anger at what they had done to us, I couldn’t believe the Angels were no more in God’s eye than meat for our table. “So Angels have no free will?”
“Who knows? Christ’s Blood, I’m not sure we have free will. Perhaps we practise a necessary self-deception, to convince ourselves our lives have meaning.”
A week ago, I would have tried to argue her out of such a nihilistic perspective, but now I didn’t have the energy—nor was I so sure she was wrong. We sat in silence for a few moments, each lost in our own thoughts. I took another drink from the skin. Only tendrils of cloud now washed around us, drifting listlessly around our ankles; the edge of the sun had emerged, a few metres from the toes of our sandals. “You still haven’t explained how we got here.”
“There was no other way to leave Lower Heaven.”
“But how did we get here?”
“Passages above give access to the suns below.”
“How could you possibly know—” I stopped, recalling the coloured lines running between the surface of each Sphere and the firmament below. Not knowing what they were, I hadn’t paid them much heed. But she’d understood. “You’ve looked through God’s Eye.”
“My memory is not perfect like yours, but I told Zeracheil it wouldn’t hurt for me to know the way, too, in case,” she paused to give me a look here, “you were killed.”
I tried not to hide my uneasiness at her practicality. “You thought to use the tunnels to escape.”
“The Angels are not the most practical of creatures,” she said. “Someone has to be.”
“When the Church breached Lower Heaven, you had the Angels bring me on the palanquin to the entrance above this sun.”
The slightest dip of her head was an acknowledgement.
“Like the corridors of the Assumptions, the tunnels would be too small for the Angels. And the palanquin won’t work if it’s too far from them. So you would have carried me.” I craned my neck; it was dark, but I could see an even darker square directly above me, through which two things that looked like thick ropes hung, one reaching the back of the sun next to me, while the other dangled a few metres below the opening. Vines she’d twisted together.
“So you have no rope?”
“The Angels have little use for such things.”
We were half a kilometre above the surface of the Sphere, and I thought it unlikely Ali would have found vines to reach that distance. Nor was I sure how I’d undertake such a lengthy descent with a only one good arm. The wine must have been dizzying my wits, for the next thing I said was uncharacteristically sarcastic. “A wonderful plan. We are stranded on the back of a sun. And if we don’t die of thirst,” I lifted the wineskin, “then it will be of hunger.” I thought my barb clever, in the way a drunk is always amused by his own impoverished wit.
“We are not stranded,” she said, “and hunger will be the last of your worries when the sun goes on.”
She was right, of course. The suns lit the world, but they heated it, too; in a few hours we’d be parboiled in our own skins. “Then how are we to get down?”
She pointed behind us. “We fly.”
Turning my head, I stared open-mouthed at what looked like a pair of Angel’s wings. Two metres high and more than twice that across, they were darker than the night, as deep a shade of black as the Angel’s wings were of white.
“When an Angel injures its wing, it uses this like we use a cast, to hold the bones firm until they mend. It allows it to continue flying so its muscles don’t atrophy. ”
Propping the whole thing up was a frame in the middle, comprised of spindly looking rods to which was attached a harness of some sort. I looked at the opening, as large as the one through which I reached the Waters Above, but too small for these wings. “How did it get here?”
“It breaks down into a bundle that would fit in a rucksack, and that weighs next to nothing,” she said. “We haven’t the reach or strength to beat the wings, but they will hold us aloft, and we can bend them enough to have some control, so that we might glide to the ground.”
There was a slight gust of wind, and slow waves undulated across the dark fabric. “We are not Angels,” I said.
“Perhaps not. But for three days I practised, first from hilltops, and then from the suns of Lower Heaven. On the fourth, I added extra weight to equal yours. We will fall faster and harder here, but the Angels told me it should work nonetheless.”
We? I stared at the unbuckled straps dangling from the front of the harness.
“Sun-on is only a few hours away. Can you stand?”
I nodded numbly and handed Ali the skin. I suppose I should have been more alarmed, but the wine seemed to have done its job. Rolling onto my knees, I levered myself to my feet. My broken limb throbbed mercilessly, and my legs shook, but it was nowhere near as bad as I feared.
Ali handed back the wineskin. “Drink.”
I thought about it for a moment, wondering if it would be wise to dull my senses further. Then I tipped the skin back, mouthing a silent toast to Ignatius, drinking deeply until wine trickled from the corners of my mouth and the skin sagged from emptiness. I flung it over the edge of the sun, and watched the cloud swallow it.
Ali walked to that preposterous contraption.
The thing had been made to fit an Angel, and would have been lifted onto its back. But Ali merely walked into the midst of the frame and turned around. Resting, as it was on the ground, the upper straps just touched her shoulders. She picked it up with ease, and the wings lifted slightly on their own, as if eager to take flight.
Ali directed me to stand in front of her, facing away. When I did so, she wrapped a thick belt around my waist, drawing me back into her. As she reached around me to buckle it, I felt her breasts press against my back—and the quick beat of both our hearts. She pulled a single shoulder strap around my good arm and cinched it down. I’d braced myself for a stab of pain, but I was conscious of nothing other than the point of her chin on my shoulder and her breath tickling the nape of my neck.
“We can’t both run or we’ll trip over each other. So you must carry me piggyback. Can you do that?”
“I think so.”
“Ready?”
I didn’t answer her question; there was one I needed to ask first. “If I’d still been unconscious at sun-on, what then?”
“The Angels said you would wake.”
“But if I hadn’t?”
“You want to know if I’d have left you behind.” She paused. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I need you.”
She’d said the same thing to me before, about getting her to Rome. At that time I’d thought the anger in her words directed at me, but later realized it was self-loathing. If Ali hated anything, it was needing someone e
lse. “To lead you to Hell.”
“No. I can find my own way, if I must.”
“Then what?”
“I am with child.”
I can’t explain what happened next—only tell it: my legs churned of their own volition.
“David!”
As I ran my heels hit Ali’s shins, and we staggered and almost fell; Ali swung her legs up, wrapping them around my waist. The weight was almost too much for me, and my arm was on fire, but I lumbered forward.
“Wait!”
To the sides I saw the great wings cant forward as the wind ran under them, and felt an insistent upward tug. I closed my eyes, not wanting to know when the edge would come, listening only to the slap of my sandals and the snap of the fabric.
On my sixth stride, my right foot found no purchase and we pitched forward. Moisture from the cloud streamed across my face as we fell, like two stones, into the pall of night.
Then the breath of God caught our wings—and, miraculously, we flew.
End
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert Boyczuk has published short stories in various magazines and anthologies. He also has two books out: a collection of his short work, Horror Story and Other Horror Stories, and a novel, Nexus: Ascension (both by ChiZine Publications). More fascinating details on Bob are available at boyczuk.com.
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CITIES OF NIGHT
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BRENT HAYWARD
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FILARIA
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THE HAIR WREATH AND OTHER STORIES
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HORROR STORY AND OTHER HORROR STORIES
ROBERT BOYCZUK
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IN THE MEAN TIME
PAUL TREMBLAY
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ISLES OF THE FORSAKEN
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KATJA FROM THE PUNK BAND
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MAJOR KARNAGE
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MONSTROUS AFFECTIONS
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NAPIER'S BONES
DERRYL MURPHY
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NEXUS: ASCENSION
ROBERT BOYCZUK
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OBJECTS OF WORSHIP
CLAUDE LALUMIÈRE
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THE PATTERN SCARS
CAITLIN SWEET
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PEOPLE LIVE STILL IN CASHTOWN CORNERS
TONY BURGESS
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PICKING UP THE GHOST
TONE MILAZZO
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A ROPE OF THORNS
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SARAH COURT
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THE WORLD MORE FULL OF WEEPING
ROBERT J. WIERSEMA
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The Book of Thomas - Volume One: Heaven Page 27